Case study
Twelve years of hiring failure.
One discovery that changed everything.
The situation
For twelve years, every hire was a gamble.
Emma Dewey built BabyEm Training Agency from nothing. She knew her industry, knew her clients, and knew exactly what kind of work needed to be done. The one thing she could not figure out was how to find the right people to do it.
She tried Fiverr. She tried graduates. She tried consultants. She tried recruitment agencies. Each time, the pattern was the same: find someone promising, interview them, hire them, and watch it fall apart within six months. People said they could do the work, but that did not mean they were deeply motivated to do it.
The business stalled for two years. Not because of the market or the product, but because Emma could not get the right people in. She was surviving, not growing.
After twelve years, Emma was not just frustrated. She was defeated. She had started taking it personally, questioning whether she was cut out for running a business at all. She stopped growing the team because she could not trust the process.
"I felt really defeated by the whole hiring process. I was getting to a point where I was thinking this is literally the last hurrah, and if this doesn't work, maybe I'm not cut out for this. Even after 12 years."Emma Dewey, Founder
Then someone asked the questions
no one had asked before.
The discovery
What Emma thought she needed was not what the role actually required.
SuperHired didn't start by looking at resumes. They started with an in-depth questionnaire that asked Emma questions nobody had ever asked before... about culture, about how she felt, about what success actually looked like at 90 days. "You were asking me questions that I'd never had anyone ask me about," Emma said. "It kind of just blew me away."
The discovery revealed something Emma had never considered. The operations manager role she had been hiring for wasn't primarily an operations role. It was a systems-thinking role embedded in a relationship-driven team. The previous hires had been operationally capable but socially misaligned. They could do the work, but they couldn't do it in a way that made the team around them better.
For the first time in 12 years, someone was doing the deep work at the beginning. Getting to know Emma, her business, her values, and her goals before looking at a single candidate.
What discovery revealed
Previous hires scored high on process execution but low on the drivers that actually mattered.
The search
With the Right Person Profile built, the search looked nothing like what Emma was used to. Candidates received a 29-page Job Deck covering everything: the company, the role, what was genuinely hard about it, the exact compensation, and what Emma was like as a founder. Those who were not aligned self-selected out before anyone invested in a conversation.
Despite the deep upfront work, the process was faster than any agency Emma had used before. It didn't feel like working with a recruitment agency, she said. It felt like working with people who were genuinely passionate about making sure this was the time she would get someone right.
The setback
The first round did not produce the right fit.
The initial candidates were strong. They matched on capability and experience. But when the Work Driver profiles were compared against the environment assessment, two of three showed gaps in areas that Emma's team needed most. SuperHired presented the data honestly and recommended against moving forward.
"I never felt pushed. They showed me the data, explained the gaps, and said they wanted to try again. That was the moment I knew I was working with a different kind of firm."Emma Dewey
The outcome
The second round broke a twelve-year pattern.
The operations manager who was placed did not just fill a seat. She transformed how BabyEm worked. Within the first 90 days, she had introduced structured L10 meetings, sorted the operational systems that had been held together by habit, and immediately started taking things off Emma's plate. "She has just outperformed all expectations," Emma said. "I'd never had anyone do that."
The difference wasn't that this person was more skilled than previous hires. The difference was that her behavioral patterns, her pace, her communication style, and her emotional drivers were aligned with how BabyEm actually operated. The match was not a guess. It was measured.
She is still there. Still thriving. Still making the team better. After 8 months, this is the longest-tenured operations hire in BabyEm's history.
The candidate's perspective
Jelena was not looking for a job.
She was recommended by a friend. When she received the 29-page Job Deck, she said she had never seen such a detailed job description. "It was really describing me," she said. "You showed the good, the bad, and the ugly. I did not have a feeling that you were selling the role."
The salary transparency surprised her. The process felt less like a job search and more like a conversation between two sides trying to understand if there was a genuine fit. She felt that SuperHired cared about her the same way they cared about the company, which she said isn't always the case.
8 months in, the match has held. Jelena describes waking up without the anxious feeling she used to carry about work. She doesn't feel the need to prove anything. She just shows up, does her best, and builds something together with a team that fits.
"I haven't felt that this was a job search. I felt more that this was a job matchmaking."Jelena, Operations Manager
The candidate experience
SuperHired asked every candidate for feedback, including those who were not placed. The responses were consistent. Candidates described the communication as transparent and the process as refreshingly human. Sara, who wasn't selected, said the Job Deck was more precise than any job description she had ever seen. "They really know what they want and how they want it," she said. "Which was amazing and refreshing." Paulo, another candidate who wasn't placed, said the process felt more professional and more human than anything he had experienced. "I don't feel like just a number," he said. "I feel really a person being approached."
"Even if they have the same luck as me, the process was actually enjoyable because you feel like you're talking to real people."Sara, candidate (not placed)
"I finally feel excited about the future of my business... and that hasn't happened in a very long time."Emma Dewey, Founder, BabyEm Training Agency